holy + haste

Hello I have searched around on here and can't quite find the answer to my question. This is my second healer (first is resto druid) and basically I want a bit of clarification on haste for holy priests.

From the posts of Kelesti and such i gather than it certainly isn't a matter of get to 12.5% raid buffed and forget about it, but what should you do when you get your 12.5%?

Is it then just a matter of balancing haste/mastery roughly equal for most things, or going more mastery for mana conservation and haste for throughput? From my point of view I will be doing nothing more taxing than some 10m normal stuff so I am thinking a rough balance would possibly be the way to go.

If you for some feel that you need to gear mastery then it is probably a good idea to get at least 12.5% haste (raid buffed) since the few hundred haste you need to get is easily worth it due to the extra renew tick (2-3% increase to total hps).

Then again, none of that matters since haste is significantly better than mastery, if you ask me, ask another priest and the answer may differ.

You can stack either way or you can balance. If you're at 12.5% raid buffed haste your PoH cast is 2.2sec which is plenty great, at which point you can then stack mastery or continue with haste. I used to run with ~22% raid buffed haste and had a 2.1sec cast on PoH. The HPS difference was null as I was putting the same numbers even with the .1 sec loss on cast time due to the increased healing on each tick of EoL.

All in all you really can go either way. Test em out, see what works best for you! Your raid comp and the skill of your other healers can also come into play (as well as 10 vs 25)

I would suggest simply trying to get as much mastery and haste as possible. Forget about the arbitrary 12.5% haste. I also agree that getting PoH down to 2.1 seconds is nice...if only I could reach 2.0...

My reasoning here stems from the fact, that I have never had "If only I had more haste he would have lived" moments. Once you learn a fight you know when damage happens and can precast/get ready accordingly. Having done most fights on heroic now, there is absolutely no reason to cast faster and give up extra efficiency of mastery.

My opinion is get 12.5% for extra renew tick because this is an actual mana efficiency increase, while still giving you some haste to work with, and than dump the rest into mastery. I honestly don't know why people say that the 12.5% is arbitrary or not important. If you play a resto druid in current design, they are all about reaching the next haste breakpoint. And if you can't make the next break point you stop getting haste and invest into something else.

My opinion is get 12.5% for extra renew tick because this is an actual mana efficiency increase, while still giving you some haste to work with, and than dump the rest into mastery. I honestly don't know why people say that the 12.5% is arbitrary or not important. If you play a resto druid in current design, they are all about reaching the next haste breakpoint. And if you can't make the next break point you stop getting haste and invest into something else.

I think the reason people bring it up as "not important" is because you can stack haste past 12.5% and still be efficient, but a lot of people read it as "anything above 12.5% is useless" when in fact it is not.

Most people in this thread are wrong. As a holy priest, you want as much mastery as possible without sacrificing intellect or dipping below 12.35% haste raidbuffed. Mastery trumps haste in almost all aspects for holy, especially in hardmodes.

Most people in this thread are wrong. As a holy priest, you want as much mastery as possible without sacrificing intellect or dipping below 12.35% haste raidbuffed. Mastery trumps haste in almost all aspects for holy, especially in hardmodes.

6) And also, try to achieve 12.5% haste. If you plan to run raids with either boomkin, spriest or shaman willing to pop +5% haste totem, you can get just 7.5% and then go for mastery. Otherwise, just reforge to get to that 12.5%, it helps a lot.

Most of what you said is fine, but this is flat wrong, and I wish people would stop saying this. First of all, Haste is multiplicative, not additive. If you have 3/3 Darkness and the 5% Haste buff, you only need 4.022% Haste (or 516 Haste Rating) to achieve 12.5% raid buffed, not 7.5%.

Second, and more importantly, going straight Mastery past that point is BAD advice, and this is from someone who generally prefers Mastery to Haste. The usefulness of the two stats at that point is pretty close to even and their value depends upon whether you're raiding 10s or 25s, what your role is, your mana situation, and even the specific fight. For instance, if you're working on Chimaeron, Mastery is borderline useless and Haste is extremely valuable; on a fight like Cho'gall, where there is plenty of time to top off and the healing intense portion is constant increasing damage, I find Mastery very useful and Haste rather meh. In fact, if one is struggling to heal up Caustic Slime targets on Chimaeron, or going OOM on Cho'gall as progression fights, some reforging for one or the other is a consideration.